The biggest holiday in the world that you’ve never heard of, just happened. In China November 11th (11-11) is Singles Day. Cutesy idea so single people can revel in their singleness. But no one cares about that anymore, that’s because the original idea has been taken over by one thing: shopping.
The Chinese shopping website Taobao is the place where you can buy anything. (Think of Amazon and E-bay together and then quadroople the size) And on singles day all the shops have steep discounts. All major companies that sell in China are on there (Apple, Gap, Coke etc) but mostly it is made up buy thousands of smaller sellers. It is actually not a joke when I said you can buy anything on it. You can buy pants from Old Navy, Cap’n Crunch cereal and even rent a girlfriend if you want (or if you’re a lonely cheapskate you can just pay a little to have a girl send you a text message every morning and night as if you have a far away lover that cares about you.)
It is the biggest shopping day in the world, and dwarfs Black Friday considerably. They reached $2 billion (US Dollars) in sales in just 17 MINUTES! And averaged about 120,000 orders per minute throughout the day. The grand total for the day was $14.3 billion. For the next week or so, the entire country will be flooded with shipping boxes and delivery vans trying to deliver the estimated 20 million packages.
So did I participate this year? Helllllllll yes. Can you guess what I bought?
I bought almost all badminton clothes. (I also bought a pair of pants from Old Navy.) I had a tough time figuring out the right sizes, and who knows if I chose right. They have sizing charts and the blue shirt (the last picture) I had to buy 2XL to match my size. Psychologically that doesn’t feels good, and is one of the reasons I avoid clothes made just for Chinese customers. They are just so teeny and rarely account for boobs and height.
Also see the picture of the shorts with the leggings? Funny thing is I ordered it yesterday and today, in my class, four (out of 25) girls were wearing this exact pair. Guess it’s what all the kids are buying these days? (Though I won’t wear mine in the classroom.) Happy Singles Badminton Day!
we expect you to model your new clothes when they arrive. too small isn’t necessarily bad, and remember it’s better to look good than to feel good.
I heard that the best part of this shopping day is the discrepancy between what you thought you ordered and what you actually get! So I, too, am looking forward to a modeling session.